Domestic City, Part Five

On Saturday night, Emily walked around the lake with her boyfriend. That day, in between online matches of Death Tank which were totally amazing and destructive, she had played through the entirety of Braid. Afterwards, she took an aspirin and lay down on the couch for ten minutes in silence. Video games did not usually move her or confuse her like Braid had, and after completing the game she felt a strong need to be contemplative. She didn't really know what being contemplative properly entailed, but decided it would probably work if she and Patrick went and stared quietly at a lake. Unfortunately, there was a jetski speeding around the lake blasting techno, which ruined the mood but it did make Emily want to buy a jetski.

Braid has set Emily's brain on fire. The game, she was sure, had to mean something. Emily had about thirteen thousand different thoughts on the game rushing through her head (was there something in there about a nuclear bomb?) and she needed to talk about it with somebody who would understand.

Patrick was not that person. Emily and Patrick had an equal share in their living room bookcase: Patrick's half contained books, DVDs, music and comics, and Emily's half was nothing but games, and also one Philip Roth novel.

A couple of women in Emily's new office had recently organised a 'game group' which chose a certain game and then met every week in a cafe or somewhere similar to discuss it. Emily briefly considered joining, and submitting Braid as a topic, and then pictured herself in a library drinking tea with women ten years her senior and felt so uninspired that she wanted to throw up.

"Listen," she said to Patrick, "when we get back I want to show you this fun game Death Tank. It's cool; you can guide the missiles."

The jetski buzzed past the shore. Emily raised her arms and shouted as it sped away: "Whoooooo!"

Domestic City, Part Four

The worst thing about married life, Anthony discovered, was his keepsake photo of Dom and Maria from the Gears of War 2 limited edition and having to explain to his new wife why he wanted to tape it to the bathroom mirror. Nina had not been impressed then, or when Anthony had told the movers that the Rock Band smoke machine goes in the bedroom. Some of Nina's facial expressions made Anthony reevaluate his lifestyle choices.

She teased him one day about all the games he played being a neverending series of big macho men shooting each other and exchanging high-fives. When Anthony tried to explain the subtle thematic variations between Gears, Killzone and Army of Two, he could not do so in a way that made him feel very good about his hobby.

Eventually, Anthony reasoned with himself that being a responsible husband and a professional businessman probably meant saying goodbye to the more bro-ish aspects of his frat days -- things like violent online shooters and urinating on freshmen.

Sitting at the kitchen table with the household laptop on, Anthony tried to build swimming pools and carpet floors in The Sims, in between attempts at solving a crossword puzzle. He wondered what he would look like with a haircut.

Domestic City, Part Three

Emily's posters were affixed by thumb tacks to her dorm room drywall. The posters, collected by Emily and her roommate, had been free -- sort of, they had stolen them -- and promoted the release dates of games like Castle Crashers and PixelJunk Eden. When Emily left for class every day, she always threw on her white, faded and hand screened Minotaur China Shop t-shirt. It was the only game shirt that she owned and so she wore it as much as possible.

The shirt testified to Emily's passion for cool underground games and she wore it as a beacon for others with like-minded tastes, who she hoped would approach her and be all like "oh, sweet, rad" but the reality was that her tastes ran so niche that no one who saw the shirt even knew it was a game. The same went for the N+ patches sewn on to her jacket. Upon this realisation, she slouched sullenly in lecture halls, carving Stars over Half Moon Bay constellations into the desks with a penknife.

On weekends, she visited game stores and made her way to the alternative section at the back and flipped through the rows of second-hand games. Selecting a bootleg CD-R of Gravitation, she walked back to the counter where she overheard two guys discussing the copy of BioShock that they were buying and in particular what a deep story it was supposed to have. Emily rolled her eyes.

That Tuesday, Emily and her roommate lied their way into a club downtown where the launch party for Flower was being held. Emily flashed her fake ID at the door and with her posture affected a maturity that wouldn't be legally hers until the next year. In the club, Emily and her roommate pointed out to each other all the developers that they recognised from blogs. Late into the night, someone took the stage to make a speech and Emily threw her arms into the air and at the top of her lungs screamed "whooooooo!"

A morose-looking guy stood at the bar talking to his friends, wearing a Flashbang Studios t-shirt. Emily leaned across the bar next to him, and shouted giddily over the music: "hey, I like that developer."